WBRC had the honor of designing Tidewell’s most recent hospice house in WBRC’s Florida hometown of Lakewood Ranch—one of the nation’s fastest-growing master-planned communities. This 12-bed, 22,114 SF end-of-life care facility is strategically designed to offer the highest standard of hospice care in a beautiful, homelike setting.
Patient care at Tidewell Hospice House is provided in two six-bed patient care wings. Each wing offers a spacious family gathering room with a kitchenette and dining area. All 12 patient rooms are over 300 SF, large enough for several family members to visit. Each room includes a sleep sofa to accommodate overnight stays. Custom headboards and cabinetry are equipped with enhanced call system for patients, patient-controlled lighting, and bedside nurse’s charting stations.
One central support core serves both wings. This efficiently-designed space includes administrative offices, med management room, commercial kitchen, laundry, meeting and break rooms, employee lockers and restrooms, and dedicated mechanical, storage, and receiving areas.
Tidewell Hospice House’s open-format welcome center is visible from the two nurses’ stations. An adjacent reflection room provides a quiet, private space for friends and family to gather. Paintings and fine art photos by local artists are displayed throughout the building, and a distinctive tropical fish aquarium offers a relaxing visual that is shared by the welcome center and the reflection room.
The site design of the facility features a front plaza with a stone fountain, memory benches, and stone and wood pergola. The back of the building provides separate employee parking and a covered service entrance.
Tidewell Hospice House was designed to shelter-in-place during a Category 5 hurricane. The building contains 3,600 SF of shell space to accommodate future expansion.